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Simple words, difficult pronouncement?

I wonder if my pronunciation of words is the future of English. Like I said above, I moved around a lot during my youth and watched a lot of television, so I have a generic American nonregional accent. I have many if not most of the common word mergers like Mary, merry, marry. My vowels are mostly similar. I soften most hard consonants, like changing the T in "water" to a soft D. I rush through and smooth over syllables that add complexity to words: it's "Wensday" and "Febuary". Every shortcut is taken, every complexity is simplified, and every rough bit is smoothed. The result is I speak very quickly with the least possible effort exerted. That strikes me as very American! I bet this is the trend English will follow up until it splits into entirely different languages.
 
Klee-a? I say "nuclear" exactly like the words "new clear".

Yep, me too. Glenn's from the south of England, they talk funny there. :)

Cor blimey guvn'r, strike a light and no mistake! We talks proper, we does.

Mr Cholmondley Warner and a short film about that Mr Hitler (who, as it happens, was born a cockney) :

 
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The one that I notice often is in military shows when a character speaks about "ordinance disposal" or that the "ordinance" will explode. It happens in NCIS about once or twice a season.

But, that may be a case of using the wrong word instead of mispronouncing.


To be fair, it could also be a matter of mishearing. The distinction between the two can be difficult to articulate, and the threshold between not pronouncing it properly and not hearing it properly is pretty slim.
 
I was rewatching Star Trek TNG and noticed that Worf pronounces the O in "sensors" where every other actor pronounces the word like "sensers". As it's a sci-fi word for things that don't yet exist I doubt either is the authoritatively correct way, but it is weird and now I can't un-notice it when it comes up. He says it so clearly it sounds like he's trying to correct the other characters!


Perhaps the particular type of sensors being referred to in the TV show don't exist yet, but the usage of "sensors" as devices has been around for quite some time. No reason Worf should be the only one who pronounces it properly. The others are just slurring it.
 
I did a production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof where every actor spoke with a southern accent, but no two spoke with the same southern accent.


In Atlanta, were you?

Kidding aside, southern accents by actors always tickle me. To start off with there are quite a few more variants than most people realize, which is lucky for the actors, since most of them don't know any southern accent properly, and get by on some sort of generic version that only barely sounds much like any of the real ones.

Tougher still for the actors with actual southern roots, who get cast in a part where they must needs play a character from some other part of the south than where they were raised. This usually isn't noticed by anyone who isn't from the south themselves and can only hear 'southern', but not any variations of inflection or dialect, but it can really stand out for someone who is.
 
It's sort of off topic, but this thread reminded me of a period in my life when I started becoming more social and trying to talk more with people I wasn't that familiar with. Having been very shy for most of my life, it was a little difficult for me, and I started to stutter. It's odd because I didn't mind and actually felt good about it because while I was stuttering, at least I was speaking. It wasn't a horrible stutter, but it was certainly noticeable.

That lasted for about 2 years, I think. It was more than ten years ago, so hard to remember exactly.
 
"Uh Stray Yn"
As an immigrant I have always found it strange the those who leave the "Uh!" off are regarded as common by those who pronounce the "Uh!"

Also, listening to radio traffic reports I wondered could there really be a road in the Northern Beaches of Sydney called "Wanker's Parkway".
 
As an immigrant I have always found it strange the those who leave the "Uh!" off are regarded as common by those who pronounce the "Uh!"

Also, listening to radio traffic reports I wondered could there really be a road in the Northern Beaches of Sydney called "Wanker's Parkway".
When my son was in primary school he had to fill out a sheet about Australian tourist destinations. He asked for advice on what to put down for "Name a prominent Australian natural feature which is a popular tourist destination" and wrote down the response "Esroc".

Professor Afferbeck Lauder lives again.
 
To be fair, it could also be a matter of mishearing. The distinction between the two can be difficult to articulate, and the threshold between not pronouncing it properly and not hearing it properly is pretty slim.

I've attached a screen capture from an episode of NCIS. :-)
 

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I've been mulling over the thread title. I did prefer "pronouncement" over "pronunciation", but I think a better word may be "enunciation"?
 
No one's mentioned "molybdenum" yet - I just end up mumbling when trying to say it. It does come into everyday speech so often for me :rolleyes:
 
Changing the name of one of the most popular lakes in the area from Lake Calhoun to its original Dakota name Bde Maka Ska met with some resistance.

Nobody still knows where the accented syllables are supposed to be.
 
"Rural". The "rur" trips me up most of the time. It was a running joke in my college history classes that I'd substitute "non-urban" for "rural" whenever I needed to use the word, which comes up a lot in medieval history discussions.

I also have trouble with the penultimate syllable of "particularly", the R and L being so close together. I don't think I have a true speech impediment, I just tend to talk too fast and stumble when I hit certain combinations of sounds.

Rural is definitely the hardest for me. And I used to do lots of appraisals in rural San Diego county
 
Changing the name of one of the most popular lakes in the area from Lake Calhoun to its original Dakota name Bde Maka Ska met with some resistance.

Nobody still knows where the accented syllables are supposed to be.

I always wonder when people want to change place names to earlier versions why they don't translate them. "We're undoing colonial imperialism by restoring the name of Lake Whiteman to Yamotahominagashaw! Which means 'Deer Lake'." "So, why not name it 'Deer Lake'?" The people who named it were trying to convey it's a lake with deer, they weren't committing to a particular set of syllables regardless of whether anybody knew their meaning.
 
I always wonder when people want to change place names to earlier versions why they don't translate them. "We're undoing colonial imperialism by restoring the name of Lake Whiteman to Yamotahominagashaw! Which means 'Deer Lake'." "So, why not name it 'Deer Lake'?" The people who named it were trying to convey it's a lake with deer, they weren't committing to a particular set of syllables regardless of whether anybody knew their meaning.


"Monongahela" meant "river of muddy banks". I think that "Monongahela River" sounds nicer, even if the other is more descriptive.
 
Changing the name of one of the most popular lakes in the area from Lake Calhoun to its original Dakota name Bde Maka Ska met with some resistance.

Nobody still knows where the accented syllables are supposed to be.

Changing Mt. Rainier back to it's native name of Tacoma always gets a lot of resistance from Seattle for some reason.
Oh, and Seattle and Chief Sealth High School in that burg are both named after the same guy.
 
I always wonder when people want to change place names to earlier versions why they don't translate them. "We're undoing colonial imperialism by restoring the name of Lake Whiteman to Yamotahominagashaw! Which means 'Deer Lake'." "So, why not name it 'Deer Lake'?" The people who named it were trying to convey it's a lake with deer, they weren't committing to a particular set of syllables regardless of whether anybody knew their meaning.

The native name of Mt. Baker in my state is Koma Kulshan, which means something like Big Breast. Just like the Grand Tetons.
 
I was rewatching Star Trek TNG and noticed that Worf pronounces the O in "sensors" where every other actor pronounces the word like "sensers". As it's a sci-fi word for things that don't yet exist I doubt either is the authoritatively correct way, but it is weird and now I can't un-notice it when it comes up. He says it so clearly it sounds like he's trying to correct the other characters!
Real reason: Michael Dorn had to wear false teeth, and some pronunciations are just so to prevent his false teeth falling out.

True reason: He's a Klingon who spoke only Klingon as a small child, then he was raised by Russian Jews! Of course he has an odd pronunciation! :)
 
"Rural". The "rur" trips me up most of the time. It was a running joke in my college history classes that I'd substitute "non-urban" for "rural" whenever I needed to use the word, which comes up a lot in medieval history discussions.
Can you say "rural juror"?
 
Yes. It is also evidence, however, that NCIS's issue is using the wrong word rather than mispronouncing it.


Spell Check can be a bitch.


By coincidence, or perhaps synchronicity, over the past couple of days I have read Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey, the beginning of the Expanse series and an excellent effort of hard SF.

In it I noted two examples of the word "ordinance" when the usage clearly indicated that "ordnance" was the appropriate term.

You would think that with all of the review that a major novel from a top publishing house is subject to that such an error would have been detected and removed, especially with the noticeably martial bent of the story.

Yeah, spell check's a bitch.
 
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